The Geek Fixhttp://thegeekfix.com
Fixes from a GeekWed, 24 May 2017 04:10:24 +0000en-UShourly1https://i0.wp.com/thegeekfix.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/cropped-tgf_logo_512x512.png?fit=32%2C32The Geek Fixhttp://thegeekfix.com
3232107202048Cemu Compressing & Save Storage Space with wudCompresshttp://thegeekfix.com/cemu-compressing-save-storage-space-with-wudcompress/
http://thegeekfix.com/cemu-compressing-save-storage-space-with-wudcompress/#respondWed, 24 May 2017 04:10:24 +0000http://thegeekfix.com/?p=442How to save storage space by compressing .wud files using wudCompress. I’m not sure if you have noticed but most Wii images are quite large with them coming in at around 24GB. It’s not because the games contain that much data, it’s just how the Wii images are created. The game could actually be 4GB yet […]

How to save storage space by compressing .wud files using wudCompress.

I’m not sure if you have noticed but most Wii images are quite large with them coming in at around 24GB. It’s not because the games contain that much data, it’s just how the Wii images are created. The game could actually be 4GB yet the image you grabbed will normally hover around the 24GB mark. Obviously this can create a storage issue if you have a lot of games. Fortunately there are tools available that can greatly reduce the size these games take, upwards of up to 50% smaller while still being Cemu compatible and one of those tools is called wudCompress.

Download

How to Use

Once you have extracted the files there isn’t much to wudCompress. You’ll notice an .exe file, but you don’t need to open it. To use the compression tool all you have to do is simply drag the .wud file on top of the WudCompress.exe. The tool will then compress the .wud image and create a much smaller .wux file. Some compression examples below:

If you need access to the original .wud file you can simply drag previously created .wux file on top of WudCompress.exe to decompress the .wux file.

Conclusion

As you can see there are a lot of empty blocks within the Wii game images. By using the WudCompress tool you can easily save gigabytes of storage per game. I hope this article was helpful and if you’d like to support the site if I could please ask you to disable ad-block extensions as the ads that are displayed are minimal.

]]>http://thegeekfix.com/cemu-compressing-save-storage-space-with-wudcompress/feed/0442Cemu Emulator and AMD Drivers Issuehttp://thegeekfix.com/cemu-amd-drivers-issue/
http://thegeekfix.com/cemu-amd-drivers-issue/#respondTue, 25 Apr 2017 04:01:59 +0000http://thegeekfix.com/?p=435Known issues with AMD cards and drivers. AMD Driver Issue If you are having issues with Cemu Emulator and have an AMD video card then you are not alone. Some of the latest drivers from AMD have been known to cause some issues with the emulator and games. One notable game that I see mentioned a lot […]

AMD Driver Issue

If you are having issues with Cemu Emulator and have an AMD video card then you are not alone. Some of the latest drivers from AMD have been known to cause some issues with the emulator and games. One notable game that I see mentioned a lot is Mario Kart 8. With the latest drivers Cemu Emulator crashes on startup.

The Fix

In order to fix the issue the solution is to downgrade to an earlier driver, specifically 17.1.2. You can download it here. You can use AMD’s Clean Install Utility to remove currently installed drivers cleanly.

Apparently you can also rollback the drivers following these steps:

Uninstall your current AMD driver and restart your computer.

Download and install the driver linked above and restart again.

Open Device Manager, find your GPU under Display Adapters and Open the Properties window.

Click the driver tab and roll back the driver.

The screen will go black for a few seconds. If you try opening the AMD Control Panel it will crash.

Try opening it anyway and then when it crashes, open it again and it should be on version 17.1.2.

Conclusion

Hopefully downgrading to an earlier AMD driver will resolve any issues you are facing. I have heard that 1.7.5 has better AMD support, but as of writing this it is only available to Patreon members.

]]>http://thegeekfix.com/cemu-amd-drivers-issue/feed/0435Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Cemu Setuphttp://thegeekfix.com/legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild-cemu-setup/
http://thegeekfix.com/legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild-cemu-setup/#respondThu, 20 Apr 2017 02:17:21 +0000http://thegeekfix.com/?p=403Guide on how to set up Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild using Cemu Emulator. Cemu 1.7.4 Release I finally decided with the release of 1.7.4 that it was now a good time to create a guide on how to set up Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild as the game is in a relatively […]

Guide on how to set up Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild using Cemu Emulator.

Cemu 1.7.4 Release

I finally decided with the release of 1.7.4 that it was now a good time to create a guide on how to set up Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild as the game is in a relatively good spot in terms of playable compatibility. With the Rune abilities, Shrines, and sinking fixed or nearly fixed along with many other bugs it is much more enjoyable. With that being said you will still encounter bugs, camera locks, softlocks, or any number of other bugs as Cemu is continuing to be developed.

Note: You may find that you’re able to get better performance with 1.7.3c if you are able to find it.

PC Requirements

While the emulator can be ran on practically any system, for the most enjoyable experience I would recommend the following:

CPU: i5 or better

RAM: 8GB+

SSD

Decent GPU

Emulation is CPU intensive, single core specifically, so if you can OC your CPU you will notice FPS improvements. AMD CPU’s work as well, but again single core performance is king when it comes to emulation. The more RAM the better when it comes to shader caches. There are some issues with NVIDIA GPU’s causing shader caches to use an incredible amount of RAM when loading the shader caches. As far as GPU’s, having a 1080ti will see little to no improvement, but I would definitely recommend more than integrated graphics.

I am assuming you have a legal copy of Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild in the correct format. I will not be going over where or how to obtain a copy.

Downloading Cemu Emulator

If you would like the latest versions of the emulator then I would highly suggest joining their Patreon page for $5. You can support them for with as little as $1, but $5 is the minimum to get access to the latest versions. If instead you prefer to wait 2 weeks for the releases to become public then you can grab the emulator from their website.

Graphic Packs

Graphic Packs are a way to enhance the appearance of the game. You can see an example of a graphic pack in action here. You can find a nice collection of graphic packs for Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild on Github. You can download all the offerings by clicking on Clone or download > Download Zip. I would recommend adding the following located in the Enhancement folder:

BreathOfTheWild_AARemoval

BreathOfTheWild_HighResShadows

You can experiment with the other graphic packs in the Enthusiast folder.

BreathOfTheWild_2880p

BreathOfTheWild_4320p

BreathOfTheWild_5760p

Install: Graphic packs are easy to install. Within the Cemu folder should be another folder called graphicpacks, if not you can create it. As you probably guessed, you simply drop the graphic packs into the graphicpacks folder.

Cemu Graphic Packs

Apply Graphic Pack: Once the graphic packs are installed you can activate them within the emulator by navigating to Cemu > Options > Graphic Packs. Then check the ones you installed.

Cemu Graphic Pack Enable

Shader Cache

While this step isn’t necessary, if you want to create the most enjoyable experience from the start you’ll want to grab a shader cache for Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. There are some different size cache’s floating around for the game, but anything around 6k-9k is ideal. Anything more than 10k may contain data from another game. Keep in mind that the larger the cache the more RAM it will consume when compiling the cache, especially for Nvidia cards. Also, while each region has a different .bin name, you can simply rename the .bin for your game’s region. To determine the game’s .bin name, once the game has loaded you can take a look at the application title bar of Cemu and the .bin will be listed there right after SaveDir.

USA: dcac9927.bin

EU: 042b7a3a.bin

*Note: These will be different based on the region and the game’s version number.

Install: Simply add the .bin file to the Cemu/shaderCache/transferable folder.

Cemu Shader Cache

Cutscene Issue

There is an issue with cutscenes not playing in Cemu Emulator, so it’s not just Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. To correct it you’ll want to take a look at Cemu Hook. I’ve written about it in the past here.

Loading Legend of Zelda: BotW

Once you have the emulator installed and the shader cache downloaded you can now load up Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The supported files include:

wud

wux

iso

wad

rpx

*Note: You can usually find the rpx file within the code folder of the game once it’s extracted.

If you decided to use a shader cache then it will compile the first time you load the game. This can take some time depending on the size of the shader cache. Fortunately you should only have to do this one time. The next time you load the game it will still compile, but should be a lot quicker.

Cemu Compiling Shader Cache

Conclusion

Hopefully you found this guide helpful. If you are experiencing issues you can always take a look at the Cemu Subreddit on Reddit or even join the Discord server.

]]>http://thegeekfix.com/legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild-cemu-setup/feed/0403EVGA Hybrid Kit Pump Buzzing Fixhttp://thegeekfix.com/evga-hybrid-kit-buzzing-fix/
http://thegeekfix.com/evga-hybrid-kit-buzzing-fix/#commentsSun, 16 Apr 2017 04:11:34 +0000http://thegeekfix.com/?p=394How to fix the buzzing from the EVGA Hybrid Kit. EVGA Hybrid Kit I own the EVGA GTX 1070 FTW edition card, but decided that I wanted to reduce noise and temperatures by opting to upgrade to the EVGA Hybrid Kit. While I was able to achieve much lower temperatures, almost cutting them in half, […]

EVGA Hybrid Kit

I own the EVGA GTX 1070 FTW edition card, but decided that I wanted to reduce noise and temperatures by opting to upgrade to the EVGA Hybrid Kit. While I was able to achieve much lower temperatures, almost cutting them in half, I did notice a loud buzzing noise coming from the pump. After doing some research online I found that it is quite a common occurrence when it comes to the EVGA Hybrid Kits, but there is a way to fix it.

The Fix

The reason why there is a buzzing sound coming from the pump is that it is running at full speed of about 1800rpm. Unlike some other CPU pumps like the Corsair H100 v2 which can regulate the speed via power, the EVGA pump is not adjustable since it’s only a 2 pin cable. There are two ways that this can be fixed though, one that is easy and keeps the warranty in tact, while the other requires modding and voids the warranty. In this article I will go over the easy method.

For the easy method all you really need to do is to buy a 4 pin mini GPU to 4 pin fan header adapter. Then instead of using the splitter that is used to power the pump and the fan on the card, you’ll simply plug the pump fan in to the adapter and then in to a fan header on your motherboard and power the GPU fan as you normally would by plugging it directly in to the card.

4 Pin Mini GPU to 4 Pin Fan Header Adapter

Once the adapter is installed you will have to manually control the pump fan speed either via the BIOS settings on your motherboard or software. While Speedfan was once the recommended software for controlling fan speed I wasn’t able to have any success with it on the newer motherboards. In my BIOS there are some settings to adjust the fan speed via mode (Quiet/Normal/Performance) or through CPU temperature setting, but I didn’t like either option so I had to look elsewhere. I ended up finding a great application called Argus Monitor which not only allowed me to control the fan speed of the pump manually, but to also adjust the speed based on GPU temperature. What I decided as the final settings was to keep the pump speed at 50% (1400rpm), but have the radiator fan adjust based on a GPU temperature curve. You can find a screenshot below:

Argus Monitor (shareware)

The adapter is a bit hard to find, but can currently be found on eBay. There is a smaller sleeved version available on eBay as well.

Conclusion

That’s all there is to it. With this simple adapter and with the Argus Monitor software you can reduce the speed of the EVGA Hybrid Kit pump which will virtually eliminate the buzzing sound.

]]>http://thegeekfix.com/evga-hybrid-kit-buzzing-fix/feed/14394Cemu LoZ: Breath of the Wild Cutscene Fixhttp://thegeekfix.com/cemu-loz-breath-wild-cutscene-fix/
http://thegeekfix.com/cemu-loz-breath-wild-cutscene-fix/#respondTue, 04 Apr 2017 03:31:14 +0000http://thegeekfix.com/?p=385How to fix the cutscene issue with Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Cemu Emulator Cutscene Issue For the most part, Cemu Emulator is pretty outstanding. It does have some flaws, and one of them was cutscene’s not displaying properly during a game. The workaround to viewing them was to go in to the […]

How to fix the cutscene issue with Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

Cemu Emulator Cutscene Issue

For the most part, Cemu Emulator is pretty outstanding. It does have some flaws, and one of them was cutscene’s not displaying properly during a game. The workaround to viewing them was to go in to the game’s folder and just load up the .mp4 video files, but they aren’t exactly in order. The developers of Cemu responded saying that it was a low priority to get cutscenes in games fixed, but fortunately a Cemu user had the knowledge and experience to go about and fix it themselves and we will be forever grateful.

The Fix

The fix is called Cemu Hook and to apply it is extremely simple. You can download Cemu Hook by rajkosto here. In the zip file is a dll. All you have to do is add the .dll file to your Cemu directory. That’s it! The games in cutscenes should work properly. I am not sure if they work for all games, but it has been verified to work with Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

Conclusion

That’s all there really is to it. Hopefully this will make the game that much more enjoyable.

Note: With the latest release of Cemu, 1.7.4c to Patreon subscribers you might run in to an issue with it crashing Cemu when you try to run the emulator with Cemu Hook. The solution to the problem is to use and older version, Cemu hook 0.3.1.0 for 1.7.3d. While it says that it is for the current public release, it does work for the latest Patreon build and has been verified by many users.

This graphic pack will make Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD for Cemu a little more clear.

Cemu Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD

The last few posts that I’ve made involving Wind Waker HD for Cemu has focused mainly on ways to improve the gameplay. If you haven’t read them, I would definitely check out the high resolution shadows and trigger fix. This graphic pack will reduce the bloom effect that the game applies.

Unlike the other posts where you had to download files, this fix is included within Cemu. While applying the reduce bloom graphic pack only has a subtle change, it does in my opinion look better. The pack reduces a shader effect, or what I call “glow” that you see within the game. You can read more about the bloom effect on Wikipedia.

Screenshots

The screenshots below are an example of the difference between the normal game and with reduce bloom activated.

Improve shadows in LoZ: Wind Waker HD on Cemu with the high resolution shadow graphics pack.

Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD

Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD already looks pretty damn good when emulated using Cemu. But, the beauty of using emulation on the PC is that you’re able to customize to your hearts desire. One simple graphics pack that is easy to apply and makes the game look that much better is the high resolution shadows. It makes the shadows throughout the game that much crisper bringing the beauty of the game to another level.

Comparison Pictures

The first picture is the default settings, without any additional graphic packs being applied. You can easily see pixelation on the cliffs shadow on the ground to the left and right of Link.

Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD Default Shadows

The second picture has the high resolution graphics pack applied. The shadows of the cliff are much smoother in comparison to the above image.

This is just one of the few graphics packs that are available for Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD on Cemu to make the game look just a little bit better. Check back later for more posts discussing graphic packs.

If you want to get better controller support for Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD, check out this post regarding fixing the triggers to work simultaneously.

]]>http://thegeekfix.com/cemu-loz-wind-waker-hd-high-resolution-shadows/feed/0347Cemu LoZ: Wind Waker HD Trigger Fixhttp://thegeekfix.com/cemu-loz-wind-waker-hd-trigger-fix/
http://thegeekfix.com/cemu-loz-wind-waker-hd-trigger-fix/#respondThu, 23 Mar 2017 02:35:40 +0000http://thegeekfix.com/?p=335Fixing the trigger issue in Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD for Cemu. Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD Cemu for the most part handles Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD quite well. There are some FPS issues in some areas, but overall it is in a very playable state. One issue that Cemu has […]

Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD

Cemu for the most part handles Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD quite well. There are some FPS issues in some areas, but overall it is in a very playable state. One issue that Cemu has is being able to use both triggers simultaneously. In Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD you use the left trigger to target the enemy and the right trigger to block. Unfortunately this does not work in Cemu as Cemu is unable to detect both triggers separately when use at the same time. This is very frustrating, but there does seem to be a workaround and in my case I use an Xbox 360 controller.

Workaround 1

If you don’t want to mess with any files then the easiest workaround is to set targeting as Switch rather than Hold in the options. This way you can just easily switch targets by pulling and releasing the left trigger and then use the right trigger to hold up Link’s shield when you want to defend yourself. I actually find this a bit easier as you don’t have to constantly hold down the trigger button to maintain the locked target.

To change from HOLD to SWITCH, first go to Options and change Target Type to your desired preference.

Wind Waker Main Menu Screen

Wind Waker Options Screen

Workaround 2

The second workaround involves downloading a few files and placing them in your Cemu directory. Once that is done you’ll have to set up your controller again in order for the files to take effect. But this will allow you to use both triggers simultaneously if you wish. I’ve also noticed that rumble has started to work as well. I’m not sure if it’s related to these files or not but it’s a nice change.

Conclusion

So there are two workarounds you can choose from to ease some of the fighting within Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD. Hopefully this has helped you enjoy the game even more. I do plan on writing a few more posts related to Cemu and Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD. If you would like to support this site please feel free to disable any ad blocking extensions you might be using as there are only a few non-obtrusive ads which help fund the site.

]]>http://thegeekfix.com/cemu-loz-wind-waker-hd-trigger-fix/feed/0335How to Extract .wud Files Using VGMToolboxhttp://thegeekfix.com/how-to-extract-wud-files-using-vgmtoolbox/
http://thegeekfix.com/how-to-extract-wud-files-using-vgmtoolbox/#commentsSun, 19 Mar 2017 04:55:23 +0000http://thegeekfix.com/?p=314How I finally extracted .wud files. Cemu Emulator I’ve made a few posts regarding Dolphin, an emulator for Wii and GameCube, but I recently decided to try Cemu Emulator, an emulator for Wii U. It is not as refined as Dolphin, but development has seen some major improvements over the last few weeks. For example their […]

Cemu Emulator

I’ve made a few posts regarding Dolphin, an emulator for Wii and GameCube, but I recently decided to try Cemu Emulator, an emulator for Wii U. It is not as refined as Dolphin, but development has seen some major improvements over the last few weeks. For example their Patreon website has nearly doubled in the $ per month, most likely due to the fact Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild was released. If you would like to contribute you can click here. Not only are you supporting the developers, but there are some benefits for being donating to Cemu’s Patreon.

What are .wud files?

Being new the Cemu application there are a lot of things to learn. One of the first things I needed to learn was how to extract .wud files. If you don’t know the .wud file is the name of the .iso that Wii U games are found. There are a bunch of tools that are able to extract the .wud file, but for whatever reason no matter what tool I used I constantly ran into errors until I finally found an application that worked.

Tools I have tried:

I tried DiscU, wud2app, Wii U USB Helper, NUSGrabberGUI, etc., and they all gave me issues. One or two of the tools is ran via command prompt and I wasn’t able to find some clear documentation which didn’t help. The application that did end up working for me to extract is called VGMToolbox. I will outline below the steps to follow to extract the code, content, and meta files from a .wud file.

Drag and drop the .wud file into VGMToolBox. If all goes well you should see something similar to the screenshot below.

VGMToolBox Extract

Browse the drives until you find one with code, content, and meta folders.

Right Click the parent folder ( \ ) and extract it to your desired location.

Done.

Final Thoughts

After trying so many different tools VGMToolBox was the only one I had success with. Hopefully this guide was helpful in extracting your .wud file.

Note: A common issue I’ve seen which I also encountered was “Partition TOC Signature bytes not found”. I believe it is related to the .bin, ckey.bin and disckey.bin, being created using a standard text editor. HxD Editor fixed the issue for me.

]]>http://thegeekfix.com/how-to-extract-wud-files-using-vgmtoolbox/feed/1314Dolphin Emulator Recommended Accessorieshttp://thegeekfix.com/dolphin-emulator-recommended-accessories/
http://thegeekfix.com/dolphin-emulator-recommended-accessories/#respondMon, 13 Mar 2017 03:25:43 +0000http://thegeekfix.com/?p=300Recommended accessories for your Dolphin setup. Accessories Now that you have Dolphin setup what are your options for accessories? While third party accessories may work, it’s best to get OEM as they are the most compatible, especially when it comes to controllers. Here is a breakdown of a few accessories that can complete your build. […]

Accessories

Now that you have Dolphin setup what are your options for accessories? While third party accessories may work, it’s best to get OEM as they are the most compatible, especially when it comes to controllers. Here is a breakdown of a few accessories that can complete your build.

Controllers

There are a lot of controllers to choose from, but while third party accessories may work, it’s best to use the OEM versions. They are more compatible and will most likely work now and in the future.

Sensor Bar

Wireless Sensor Bar

Now that you have the Wii controllers you’ll need to track the motion of the pointer. There is nothing really special about sensor bars and you’ll be fine going with a third party option if you wish since what the sensor bar boils down to is RFID Led’s to determine where the controller is pointing. One does beat out the rest and is recommended.

First, forget the wireless portion in the name of the product. The product is in fact wired and the wireless portion only relates to being able to use the Wii controller wirelessly (duh!). Not only is this a sensor bar, but it is also a Bluetooth adapter. So it’s a nice 2 in 1 if you need a sensor and Bluetooth.

MSRP: $21.99

Too many wired and wireless options available to list and they should all work, but the Mayflash DolphinBar is the most recommended.

If you have any other recommendations that I forgot to include feel free to include them in a comment.